Map Western Europe
When Vincent van Gogh was thirtyone years old in the fall of 1883 he travelled to the bleak moors of northern Holland and stayed at a tavern in the village of Stuifzand. The local countryside was hardly inhabited thenLocus Deserta Atque ob Multos Paludes Invia an old map called it: A deserted and impenetrable place of many swampsbut a few farmers and former convicts had managed to carve a living from it. They dug peat brewed illegal gin and placed poles across the marshes to navigate by. Any squatter who could keep his chimney smoking for a full year earned title to the land he cleared.
There is little record of what happened to van Gogh in Stuifzandwhether he got lost in the marshes or traded sketches for shots at the bar. When I visited the village the locals mentioned him merely to illustrate an even greater national obsession: height. At the old tavern which is now a private home I was shown the tiny alcove where the painter probably slept. It looks like it would fit only a child J. W. Drukker the current owner told me. Then he and his wife Joke (a common Dutch name they explained pronounced Yohkeh) led me down the hall to a sequence of pencil marks on a doorjamb. My son he is two metres Joke told me pointing to the topmost mark six and a half feet from the floor. His feetshe held her hands about eighteen inches apartfor waterskiing. Joke herself is six feet one with blond tresses and shoulders like a Valkyrie. Drukker is six feet two.
The Netherlands as any European can tell you has become a land of giants. In a centurys time the Dutch have gone from being among the smallest people in Europe to the largest in the world. The men now average six feet oneseven inches taller than in van Goghs dayand the women five feet eight. The national organization of tall people Klub Lange Mensen has considerable lobbying power. From Rotterdam to Eindhoven ceilings have had to be lifted furniture redesigned lintels raised to keep foreheads from smacking them. Many hotels now offer twentycentimetre bed extensions and ambulances on occasion must keep their back doors open to allow for patients legs. We will not go through the ceiling the pediatrician Hans van Wieringen assured me after summarizing national height surveys that he had cordinated. But it is possible that we will grow another ten centimetres.
Walking along the canals of Amsterdam and Delft I had an odd sensation of drowningnot because the crowds were so thick but because I couldnt lift my head above them. Im five feet ten and a halfabout an inch taller than the average in the United Statesbut like most men I know I tend to round the number up. Tall men a series of studies has shown benefit from a significant bias. They get married sooner get promoted quicker and earn higher wages. According to one recent study the average sixfoot worker earns a hundred and sixtysix thousand dollars more over a thirtyyear period than his fivefootfiveinch counterpartabout eight hundred dollars more per inch per year. Short men are unlucky in politics (only five of fortythree Presidents have been shorter than average) and unluckier in love. A survey of some six thousand adolescents in the nineteensixties showed that the tallest boys were the first to get dates. The only ones more successful were those who got to choose their own clothes.
Like many biases this one has a certain basis in fact. Over the past thirty years a new breed of anthropometric historians has tracked how populations around the world have changed in stature. Height theyve concluded is a kind of biological shorthand: a composite code for all the factors that make up a societys wellbeing. Height variations within a population are largely genetic but height variations between populations are mostly environmental anthropometric history suggests. If Joe is taller than Jack its probably because his parents are taller. But if the average Norwegian is taller than the average Nigerian its because Norwegians live healthier lives. Thats why the United Nations now uses height to monitor nutrition in developing countries. In our height lies the tale of our birth and upbringing of our social class daily diet and healthcare coverage. In our height lies our history.
Ifirst heard of anthropometric history from John Komlosthe pope of the field as one of his colleagues described him. Komlos who is a professor at the University of Munich has the look of an Old World tailorsharp eyes receding hairline bottlebrush mustacheand the scholarly instincts of a born scavenger. For twenty years he has rummaged through archives on both sides of the Atlantic gathering hundreds of thousands of height records in search of trends that others may have missed.
In his way Komlos was born to do such research. He stands five inches shy of six feet and he blames much of the gap on history. His parents were Hungarian Jews who lived in Budapest during the Second World War. In 1944 when his mother was pregnant with him the Nazis took control of the city and the Russians were poised for a counterattack. The bombardment started almost simultaneously with my birth Komlos told me. (His English is perfect aside from a few oddly flattened vowels but he speaks with an exaggerated drawl as if he had learned the language by watching old Westerns.) His parents managed to get to a bombedout hospital using fake identity papers and to take the baby back safely to the family hideout. But there was little food and Komlos cried incessantly. One relative told his mother to throw the baby outside since he wasnt going to make it anyway.
The Hungarian Communists took over the city in 1948 but Komloss diet improved only slightly. During the war his father Herbert had spent months in a Hungarian forcedlabor battalion outside Stalingrad returning on foot when the Russians broke the German siege in the winter of 1943. After the war Herbert Komlos was imprisoned again this time by the Communists. They trumped up some charges because they said he was middleclass Komlos said. He was working odd jobs at the time and had only a fourthgrade education. When the Hungarian revolution came in 1956 Herbert supported it. A month later when it failed he packed up his family and fled for America.
Biologists say that we achieve our stature in three spurts: the first in infancy the second between the ages of six and eight the last in adolescence. Any decent diet can send us sprouting at these ages but take away any one of fortyfive or fifty essential nutrients and the body stops growing. (Iodine deficiency alone can knock off ten centimetres and fifteen I.Q. points one nutritionist told me.) Komlos was twelve years old when he left Hungary and he had been malnourished most of his life. His first growth spurt had been cut short; his second was hardly more